A Glimpse of the Future

Every time you drive your car, how often do you ponder on the small things that work in unison to drive you and your vehicle forwards? It’s the oily bits, the engine and the lot under the hood that’s doing all the mojo, which can be quite complicated for the uninitiated, but you don’t need a college degree to know it runs on petrol, or diesel if you drive a truck or lorry. Those who drive on a daily basis should know that it isn’t cheap filling up your tank with petrol, and with the increase of petrol prices and the high cost of living nowadays, it is imperative that an alternative, cheaper if possible, source of energy is needed, and that in itself is the conundrum that I personally think we are facing in the current status quo. A sustainable, relatively cheaper energy source to run our vehicles so that we won’t empty our pockets simply to ferry ourselves to work.

The Japanese automobile industries, namely Toyota, have taken a step forward in reducing the consumption of fuel in our everyday commute by introducing the hybrid technology in 1997 with the zippy family car, the Prius. After several improvements to the hybrid drivetrain over the years, the Prius is the most popular family hybrid sedan, in the world, though it has received so much resent from the petrolhead community for much unknown reasons. Other popular hybrids on our roads today are the likes of the Honda Insight, the famous sports hybrid Honda CR-Z, Jazz hybrids, Civic hybrids, a range of high end Audis mainly A5 onwards, a few BMWs with the ActiveHybrid badge.

Hybrids work by coupling an electric motor with a normal car engine to work hand in hand. At low speeds normally around 30kph, the internal combustion engine shuts down completely and the car cruises, or rather crawls around by the power of electricity. A battery feeds energy to an electric motor that spins the wheels, thus saving fuel and in turn, saving money! Another advantage is, during acceleration from a stop, where a normal combustion engine would guzzle a lot of fuel to get things going building up torque as the gear rises, the hybrid would start to drive forward using the electric motor with instantaneous torque, and when the car is at a suitable driving speed, the combustion engine kicks in taking over the drivetrain. A combustion engine takes in so much fuel during start-stop traffic like those in urban areas such as Kuala Lumpur that it severely reduces fuel economy. Plus, to add to the reduced fuel economy, start-stop traffic is highly strenuous to the parts of the engine.

So, why don’t we just switch off the combustion engine and just run on electricity? We could, and that could ultimately save a lot of our petrol cash, right? Well, sort of, because there’s a catch, it doesn’t last long. A typical hybrid could last around 30km to 40km per charge before the batteries dry out and the combustion engine takes over while charging them. A sub 40km range is sufficient for urban driving and it saves considerable amount of petrol cash, and it gives off less fumes too.

I’ve learned that short drives and cold starts are a factor of fast degradation in engine performance. Believe it or not, a 30km drive on the freeway is more economical and easy on the engine compared to a 5km journey to your office. I’ve done a small survey out of ten people around my area on the ranges they drive daily and the number of cold starts. Cold starts are when you first start your engine in the morning and drive without warming up the engine first.  Six out of ten reportedly drove below than 10km every morning simply to buy groceries, breakfast or simply sending their children to school. A short drive is very harmful to the internals of your car. Fuel economy would be the least of your concerns. Plus, have you ever had the thought of 1.5 tons of steel just carrying one person around? Doesn’t it sound like a waste of petrol, especially when one travels short distances just for relatively trivial errands?

Some readers might have already realized a few paragraphs earlier that the hybrid technology isn’t the silver bullet in reducing your petrol expenditure by much, but it might save relatively a lot for those short range drivers. So, what could be the next step to solve all these problems of trying to curb fuel expenditure and such?

It’s closer to you than you think, it’s coursing through your room, powering up all your devices. Yes, it’s electricity. Welcome everyone, to the future.

“But Syazwan, I thought you said electricity wasn’t reliable?”

Yes, I agree but to some extent. An electric car works almost similar to a hybrid; just without the petrol engine and it has a larger battery for more juice. There are a few prominent electric vehicle companies around the globe. The most prominent would be Tesla Motors. We have the Nissan Leaf on our shores, and the Mitsubishi i-MiEV.

“How much would one of these set me back?”

Looks decent to me

Oh God! Who designed that?

Uhm, right, it’s around above RM100,000. Without insurance. Yes, it might sound ludicrous but if you consider it as a long time investment, it suddenly doesn’t sound so absurd. Consider this, charging up a flat battery to full, which gives you a maximum range of approximately 150km, costs you about RM3.50. A conventional petrol car, say a Golf GTi, needs around 12 litres of petrol to do 150km, and that costs around RM25 per fill at the current price. Imagine doing that for a year, how much you would save if you often travel around town and back. Let’s say, you charge it up every night, so RM3.50 x 30 x12 which gets you a yearly cost of RM1260. In comparison, you would fill your car, let’s say around 3 times a week. That would be RM25 x 3 x 4 x 12. Your yearly fuel consumption would be RM3600. You wouldn’t save much but it shows promise that you could cut costs. Plus, because it doesn’t have an engine, it has less moving parts, and your yearly maintenance costs are reduced. No cylinders, no filters, no pumps, not tailpipes, no exhaust fumes. You only need to change the brake fluids and the tyres. Road tax is charged by the lowest price possible, which is a frugal RM10, and the insurance is priced based on a 660cc engine. See, so there’s still some compromise between buying an electric car and a conventional petrol car.

All electric five-door sedan, Tesla Model S.

Let’s be realistic here, electric vehicles generally aren’t the most eye catching car on the roads, though the Tesla Model S looks very futuristic. It isn’t the most reliable vehicle for long distance driving. It isn’t as big as the other hatches. So, you might be wondering what might justify even a thought to buy one of these oversized golf carts.

In the future, technology would surpass all these cars we see now. Man will find more efficient ways to utilize energy, but before we reach that stage, this is the first leap into the future. We are the pioneers of the future automotive technology.  

The first all-electric supercar from the chaps at Affalterbach

Rewriting the meaning of sports cars

In the distant future, I am certain this EV tech could be perfected. You might not be saving much, but you’re actually saving much more. You are saving Mother Earth. But what’s more important is, when you buy an electric vehicle, you also buy a promise. 

A promise that even when there’s no other option, when the fuel sources are too expensive, too hard to find, the electric vehicles does at least show us cars will live on in our lives.